Edmunds released data this month on the results of the Cash for Clunkers stimulus. Freakonomics blog commented. Now the Detroit News has offered a state-by-state analysis of how funds were used. Which state was most likely to trade an American car for another American car? You guessed it...
posted by jefficator
on Nov 18, 2009 -
37 comments

War Dances: “I wanted to call my father and tell him that a white man thought my brain was beautiful”. Sherman Alexie doing his thing in The New Yorker, excerpted from his upcoming book (early review; interview 1, 2.)
posted by Non Prosequitur
on Oct 5, 2009 -
45 comments

Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia, offers a radical proposal in The New York Times for the restructuring of the American university system. Two key components of the proposal entail ending tenure and shuttering academic departments—replacing disciplines with problems, and then tackling them with a cooperative and multidisciplinary approach, e.g. The Department of the Future of Water made up of geologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and ethicists. Should we End the University as We Know It?
posted by Toekneesan
on Apr 27, 2009 -
84 comments

Shockingly, a novel about a Nazi officer who abets murder squads, transports Jews to Auschwitz, has sex with his twin sister, possibly kills his parents and then dies rich, old and reflective has caused a trans-Atlantic controversy among literary critics. Published in the original French three years ago, the English translation of Jonathan Littell'sThe Kindly Ones hit American bookstores this week. [more inside]
posted by zoomorphic
on Mar 11, 2009 -
86 comments

This is a collection of the National Archives stored in the Digital Vaults. You can browse through hundreds of photographs, documents, and film clips and discover the connection between some of the National Archives' most treasured records. With the Pathways tool you can see the unique and surprising connections between events and people and test your knowledge of history. As you travel through the site and collect documents, images and films, you can then merge the objects to create your own poster or movie from your collection.
posted by netbros
on Jul 17, 2008 -
16 comments

Land of the Free, home of the geek. Steven Schofield takes photos of british sci-fi fans, dressed in character in their homes. He treats it as 'found' photography, which seems to illustrate the subjects vulnerability. The title of the work is Land of the Free - and illustrates how American culture infiltrates, with the ironic edge of questioning the idea of the freedom of choosing to copy the look of these fictional characters. via kottke
posted by filmgeek
on Jul 14, 2008 -
36 comments

"Nobody in the antipoverty community and nobody in city leadership was going to welcome the news that the noble experiment that they’d been engaged in for the past decade had been bringing the city down, in ways they’d never expected. But the connection was too obvious to ignore, and Betts and Janikowski figured that the same thing must be happening all around the country."
American Murder Mystery. Page 2. Page 3. Page 4.
posted by wittgenstein
on Jul 7, 2008 -
57 comments

Bobby Dunbar was a four year-old boy that vanished in 1912, while on a fishing trip with his family in a Louisiana swamp. For weeks, searchers combed the area looking for him. The lake where he went missing was dynamited. Alligators were captured and had their bellies slit open to see if the body was inside. Nothing was found except a set of child's footprints leading to an old railroad trestle. Eight months later, the police found Bobby in the company of a drifter with a horse-drawn cart. He protested his innocence but was arrested and charged with kidnapping. Another woman came forward and claimed Bobby was, in fact, her son. But she was an unmarried fieldworker, and her claims were dismissed. The crime became a nationwide media event and the boy was returned to his parents, and their hometown held a parade in his honor. Bobby returned to his life. Ninety-one years later, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter uncovered the truth.
posted by smoothvirus
on Mar 19, 2008 -
78 comments

"Hundreds of thousands of Americans have endured tours of duty in Iraq. They are returning home with a new word on their lips. It will have an impact on the American Experiment, inshallah."
posted by Firas
on Dec 7, 2007 -
52 comments

Love American Style Season One Volume One is coming to DVD on November 20th. The series ran on ABC-TV from 1969-1974, was nominated for an emmy for best comedy series (won for music) and often featured pilots that had been turned down by the networks. Some would later be picked up after airing on Love American Style; two such shows were Happy Days and Wait til Your Father Gets Home. The original theme song was performed by the Cowsills, here is their live version years later. As a kid, I actually hoped my dating life might be fun and humorous like the show, no such luck.
posted by CameraObscura
on Oct 26, 2007 -
49 comments

On May 26, 1907, a 13 pound baby boy named Marion Morrison was born in Winterset, Iowa. Nicknamed "Little Duke" after his childhood dog, he grew up to become the most famousicon of Americanpatriotism in the world. When he was a football player at USC, Western filmstar Tom Mix got him a summer job at Fox in exchange for game tickets. After two years working as a prop man for $75 a week, his first acting role was in The Big Trail in 1930. "Marion Morrison" didn't sound like the right name for a trail scout though, so the studio took the last name from a Revolutionary War general and replaced "Anthony" with "John." Voila! A working actor from 1930 through the 1970s, this year John Wayne placed third among America's favorite film stars, the only deceased star on the list and the only one who has appeared every year. He was an opinionated patriot who, surprisingly, called himself a liberal... bigger than life, the consummate cowboystar, and the ultimate symbol of heroicaction and the Code of the West. In the end, acting actually took his life indirectly thanks to radiation poisoning during a movie shoot in Utah (of the 220 persons on set, 91 had contracted cancer by the early 1980s), and almost three decades after his death, his family continues to carry on his legacy. He has an an airport, an elementary school, and various CancerFoundations named after him, and while he wasn't much of a singer or dancer, he remains the ultimate symbol of Americanmanliness to this day. Apparently there are hundreds of reasons to love the guy.

Americas Favorite Architecture - The American Institute of Architecture lists its 150 most favorite buildings as ranked by its members. Zoom-able photos and building information herein. You can also rate your top five.
posted by Burhanistan
on May 3, 2007 -
65 comments

What's worse? MySpace or American Idol? How about a website that finds all the MySpace pages for those aweful
American Idol contestants (you know- the ones we are supposed to laugh at because they suck)?
posted by BrodieShadeTree
on Jan 19, 2007 -
11 comments

The Luce Foundation Center in the recently renovated and reopened National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, is more like a smörgåsbord-cum-antique store, packed in an overflowing archive rather than a more traditional museum layout. The collection is comprised of varying American art styles and genres in intimate display cases, with little in the way of context or reference. (Though the same site in this link is available on computers scattered throughout the gallery for further detail.)
posted by Dave Faris
on Jan 12, 2007 -
12 comments

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